Your Weather

Search

Share This

As we inch closer to the new year, a program aimed at identifying and aiding Mahaska County inmates with metal health illnesses, substance abuse, or both, is on the horizon.

The Jail Alternatives Program for the South Central Behavioral Health Region is entirely voluntary for inmates 18 and up, says County Supervisor Mark Doland. The program's goals are to provide treatment opportunities and follow-up measures for individuals with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. Doland represents Mahaska on the four county mental health region that serves Wapello, Appanoose, and Davis counties. Those counties and their jails already offer the Jail Alternatives Program and Mahaska is next on the list in 2017.

"It (the Jail Alternatives Program) has cut down the need for transportation from the jail to the hospital, which can leave you vulnerable,” Doland said. “It also takes away resources from the jail while you are using staff, man hours to transport. Rather than having that happen we are going to put professionals into the jail to try and cut down on the anxiety levels and all those types of things. Another benefit we have seen in the other counties is that the Suicide Watch List has gone way down."

Doland says the Mahaska County Jail can see an average of one-to-two inmates on its suicide watch list a month. Doland wants to see those figures reduced by bringing in a professional therapist or mental health professional from Mahaska Health Partnership. That person will assess if one-on-one consolation or group sessions are needed at the jail. Doland says there is also a financial benefit to the program that will keep funds from the sheriff's department in-house and reduce expenditures.

"These services that are being paid for, the transportation and all that, are coming straight out of the sheriff's budget at the current time," Doland said. "But the services, when we implement it (the Jail Alternatives Program), it will be taken out of the South Central Behavioral Health Region, which is a different pot of money."

The Jail Alternatives Program is expected to be up and running by no later that March and as early as February. Doland says the county is waiting on MHP to sign off on the program's contract and relay the hourly rate for future therapy sessions.